On Human Rights Day a group called ‘Defend Our Democracy’ (DoD) demonstrated outside the Constitutional Court.
The initiative was supported by 337 prominent individuals and organisations – including, ironically, members of the African National Congress (ANC), Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), and the South African Communist Party (SACP) – in defence of the Constitution.
“We [therefore] call on all people of goodwill to vigorously oppose this threat to our democracy and to stand united against those intent on violating the values and principles embodied in our Constitution.
Our resistance must be resolute against those determined to make a wasteland of this great country,” was the message from DoD.
As has happened before, the movement coalesced around opposition to former president Jacob Zuma and his flouting of a Constitutional Court order to attend the Zondo Commission.
DoD not new
Adriaan Basson, editor of News24 said DoD is not new; the Save South Africa movement, led by people like Sipho Pityana (a signatory), was ‘extremely effective in muscling the growing anti-Zuma movement in the years leading to Zuma’s removal in February 2018. The April 2017 Save SA protests across the country were a major public show of force against the continued capture of the ANC and the country by Zuma, his friends, and enablers.’
Basson says the problem is that campaigns like DoD are formed deliberately to avoid forming a political party. These campaigns just give a lifeline to the ANC because the campaign avoids challenging the political power of the ANC, ‘but rather attempts to resolve the party problems by making those problems look like they are country problems.’
Basson says voters disillusioned by the ANC and Democratic Alliance (DA) are looking for ‘a moderate, democratic alternative to the only growing parties in South Africa – the EFF and the FF+.’
Very few South Africans now believe that the ANC can be rescued or can correct itself. There is no faith whatsoever in its ability to govern. The ANC has sent us over the brink.
Fealty to parties, however, often dates back for generations and is stronger than practical regard for whether the party is the best possible option for the governance of the country. It can be heart-wrenching to even think about voting against one’s party.
In South Africa the rot of ANC governance has been so destructive and so inimical to democracy that pragmatism must triumph over emotion, or we are lost.
At every election the media conjures with the idea of a new party that has “none of the baggage of the existing parties”. That may be understandable, but it’s not what we have and we can’t rely on one coming along to save us.
South Africa is in such dire straits that the only criterion for voting for a party currently should be pragmatic; the party’s ability to manage the country. Ideology has become a millstone around the country’s neck, at best irrelevant and at worst, a malignant force.
The country should be run like a business for the benefit of the citizenry, its shareholders. It needs competent, hardworking management.
Support for a party is usually determined by its policies, but at this point policy comes second to the practical ability to get things done properly.
What’s on the menu?
So, what is available?
The National Assembly has 400 seats filled by representatives of 14 parties. Five of these parties are as a result of splits away from the ANC; that’s not to say that they would all be part of a coalition with the ANC.
It’s extremely difficult to start a new political party, but even more difficult to succeed at sustaining it successfully. It’s not just about the finances; it’s about organisation, policy, and, crucially, it’s about managing both itself and its constituencies successfully.
The ANC has managed appallingly where it governs with very few notable exceptions at municipal level. The EFF is run as an autocracy, but manages nowhere because it runs nothing.
The United Democratic Movement, Congress of the People, and the African Christian Democratic Party showed promise once, but they have stagnated and failed to build on their initial success. They have negligible representation, so their roles lie in coalition only.
The African Transformation Movement is supposedly the South African Council of Messianic Churches in Christ at politics. The African Independent Congress comprises two founding activists who made their names in a municipal boundary demarcation dispute. They designed their logo and name craftily to place them just above the ANC on ballot papers and create some confusion for voters.
The Inkatha Freedom Party is a tribal party and its future is uncertain with its founding leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, having retired recently. The National Freedom Party was an IFP breakaway assumed to have been created by the ANC to challenge the IFP. The once formidable Pan Africanist Congress is a shell of its former self with only one member of parliament. Al Jama-ah is the most niche of parties – representing Muslims and committed to upholding Sharia law.
Herman Mashaba and his Action SA may be attractive to business, Mashaba being seen as a real business man, as opposed to Cyril Ramaphosa who never was one.
The Mashaba question
Mashaba, however, is a questionable politician. Mashaba ignored his own caucus in the Johannesburg City Council, treating the EFF as the de facto caucus. Some in the DA caucus resigned as a result.
Mashaba regarded his approach to the EFF as a “pragmatic”. “This translated into impassioned pleas, in federal meetings, for the DA to work more closely with the EFF, often – bizarrely – conflating the EFF with black South Africans,” according to former DA leader, Helen Zille.
His repeated default to EFF positions developed to a point that several DA councillors were rumoured to be planning to vote against him in a scheduled no-confidence motion tabled by the ANC.
Mashaba decided to jump before he could be pushed. It was a near-certainty that he would lose the no-confidence motion, which was to be conducted by secret ballot. His determination to avoid that humiliation was the real reason for his resignation as Mayor.
He thus handed the City on a platter to the ANC. He claimed Zille’s election as Chairperson of the DA’s Federal Council was a “victory for people in the DA who stand diametrically opposed to [his] beliefs and value system”. Zille denies this vehemently.
However, we wait to see how Action SA, or any other new party, fares, as and when they come in to contest the political space.
What is currently available? What track record in governance do the parties have? There is only one option and that is the one with a meaningful track record, that of the DA.
Voters can’t vote for the best possible party; they can only vote for the best party available.
Anyone who lives in a decaying municipality envies a city like Cape Town. ‘Semigration’ to the Cape has become the next best thing to emigrating. Not least because the province is run by the DA.
The DA makes mistakes aplenty but they are simply not anywhere comparable to the ANC’s. For the media to regularly regard the DA in the same breath as the ANC or EFF is poor journalism.
The DA at least stands for a constitutional democracy with a free market at its core. Its principles and policies are largely those that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, not to mention the ratings agencies, see as crucial to getting South Africa out of its morass.
The continued hold of the ANC over South Africa
Dr. James Myburgh, editor of Politicsweb, suggests in his article South Africa’s democratic puzzle the following:
‘The DA today can offer a credible governmental alternative, even if it blotted its copy book somewhat in Johannesburg and Tshwane after 2016. The voters thus have a choice between a number of serious political alternatives, and they are free to express it at the ballot box. Our proportional representation system also directly translates any shifts in popular support into changes in political representation at national, provincial and local government level.
‘Why then is it that a ruling party…that everyone knows to be fantastically corrupt and bad at governing, most especially on the municipal level, is still electorally dominant, particularly in areas where it governs the worst?
‘A large part of the explanation lies, most obviously, with the racial moat that cuts across the electorate and which has prevented, at different times and stages, both the ANC realising its more totalitarian ambitions, and the DA from challenging it for support…’
The policy of cadre deployment was the one by which the ANC ‘sought to infiltrate and capture all state and parastatal institutions, obliterating all institutional obstacles (such as the merit system) in the way.’ The ANC’s cadres were required to use their hold over the “levers of power” to direct jobs, tenders, coal supply contracts, BEE shareholdings, and so on, to ANC-connected interests, all in the name of “empowering” the majority.
‘These policies were not a priority for most black voters whose main concern has always been unemployment, and their second-order effects are deeply disliked (poor quality services, power outages, corruption, low economic growth, disintegrating infrastructure, no jobs, etc.) They were primarily about rewarding the ANC’s “army” and keeping it motivated and loyal.’
Since ‘the ANC’s “army” elects the party leadership, its concerns, and those of the provincial patronage barons, tend to prevail in between election periods. But the “army” cannot completely disregard the popular mood, as it still needs to win elections to retain its hold on power, and this is the reason why the ANC (with David Mabuza casting the decisive votes) narrowly elected Cyril Ramaphosa as its President in 2017.’
The DA have governed well in the Western Cape. Myburgh says the party has maintained the capability of the state by appointing and promoting civil servants (of all colours) on merit, and awarding tenders on a similar basis. ‘The ANC has been cut off from significant streams of state patronage in DA controlled areas and its organisation has withered as a consequence.’ The Western Cape example shows that good governance is popular and will be rewarded by the voters, once it is in place.
However, Myburgh points out that the DA failed to export this model to Tshwane and Johannesburg, because of bad luck and bad choices. It didn’t secure outright majorities, and covert agreements with the EFF resulted in the DA sacrificing the very principles that had enabled it to govern cleanly and well in the Western Cape. ‘The EFF acquired significant influence over both tenders and key appointments, with deleterious results for the DA’s reputation for good and honest governance.’
Myburgh’s explanation for the DA’s “bridesmaid” status is as follows:
‘… the most extreme and destructive policies of the ANC are driven by, and have a specific appeal to, the party as an organisation. This intermediate grouping between the President and the electorate clearly plays a far larger role in determining election outcomes than one assumes. It is not just that some percentage of the profits from tenderpreneurship flows back into the party’s election coffers. The ANC’s “army” roots the party in communities, occupies the territory, mobilises support, persuades wavering voters, and gets supporters to rallies and then the polls. Its physical presence also deters voters from switching their support to another political party, particularly those situated on the other side of the moat. The DA’s great problem outside of the Western Cape is that it lacks an army to challenge the ANC, and nor can it use EFF-like methods to raise one.’
Myburgh concludes that patronage is an effective means of binding voters to the political parties that distribute it, despite it being disastrous for economic development. He cites social grants as the patronage on which the majority of the population now depend, ‘but incomes derived from state and parastatal employment, and other forms of patronage, also flow onwards into extended family networks.The poorer a population becomes the greater this effect seems to be, for while “gratitude is a burden”, dependency is enduring.’
The mainstream media has always set a very low bar of expectations for the ANC and a very high one for the DA. On its track record the DA has every right to govern; we need it to govern. But Myburgh is right; its chances of ever governing are remote.
The Western Cape will continue to be attractive as a destination to live, not just for the rich and middle class who want competence for their money. It will also be attractive to the poor and unemployed from the Eastern Cape whose province has been destroyed by the ANC. However, per Myburgh’s thesis, they will probably continue to vote for the ANC once they are in the Western Cape.
South Africa is a cruel and ironic country.
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